The Party is Over; Time to Take Out the Trash

In a fit of desperation after the debacle of last election the old coalitions within the Republican party split and several lobby groups and factions jumped aboard the Tea Party movement which became the only loud voice in the power vacuum on the right. Anger and acting out can only carry you so far however, and the latest Rasmussen poll demonstrates why the Tea Party movement will get Republicans the loose and help maintain Democrat superiority in an election cycle where Republicans should instead make huge gains.

Running for government office while decrying government as evil is a contradiction, and that contradiction is becoming clear to the public. The various factions of the Tea Party movement reached out to the extreme right to bolster their butt weight and to gather people passionate enough to show up and demonstrate, something average Republicans don’t usually do in large numbers. So we have the John Birch Society at CPAC, and the Council of Conservative Citizens, and Dominionist Constitution Party members running some tea party locals. The other flavor of tea is more Earl Grey, it’s the same groups that put Bush in office trying to gain control of the movement while disavowing all knowledge of their past (Duke Cunningham, Ralph Reed, Abramoff, etc. etc. etc.)

We have infighting from those groups over who controls the message; while the SoCon and Paleo-industry factions are trying to control the death spiral through traditional means the fringers are trying to redefine conservatism to fit their bigoted and exclusionary templates. It’s a clear formula for failure and it’s why if you care about the future of the right you better stand up now and haul out the trash like the birthers who were at the Tea Party convention.

While Tea Party groups fight for ownership of the fractured and fissured political franchise their popularity continues to plummet, and without a positive vision and direction they are not going to sway the masses. Constantly bathing in bile makes them stinky, and freely associating with known creeps isn’t going to get them elected.

It’s past time the Republican leadership recognizes the demographics I pointed out post election, and it’s time to start building a platform and direction the public will buy. Nihilism doesn’t gain you followers; it does however appeal to trash fringers – it’s certainly nothing equivalent to Morning in America, instead it’s more like Mourning in America and it has to stop.

Update: The state of affairs right now appears depressing – but there are signs of sunlight on the horizon. NRCC Young Guns